the shape of your ask

When my coworkers ask me something, I become the ask.

I am just a vessel, taking the shape of your ask.

That isn’t a complaint. Someone has a question about the network and for an hour I’m the network person. Someone hands me a customer and I’m writing the spec. Tomorrow it’s something else, and I’ll be that.

Keats wrote about it in 1818. He said the poet “has no Identity,” and is “continually in for—and filling some other Body.” He meant writers. It also fits the person everyone pings.

The skill isn’t any one shape. It’s staying empty enough to take the next one.